Georgia's state Supreme Court has reversed course and agreed to consider an appeal from a black death row inmate who has maintained his innocence in the murder of a white police officer.
The Georgia Supreme Court, which had rejected past appeals, agreed in a 4-3 decision Friday to examine whether Troy Davis, 38, deserves a new trial after his attorneys presented fresh evidence in the case, according to its website.
A day before Davis was to be executed on July 17, Georgia's state parole board granted him a 90-day stay of execution to analyze the new information.
Defense attorneys say seven of nine witnesses who had testified against Davis have changed their stories, saying earlier statements implicating him had been coerced by strongarm police tactics. Some of the witnesses have also now accused someone else as the killer in the 1989 murder.
Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the fatal shooting of off-duty police officer Mark McPhails, 27, who was killed when he tried to break up a brawl in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Savannah, Georgia.
McPhails had been moonlighting as a security guard at a neighboring establishment.
Davis, who was 20 at the time of the shooting, was singled out by several witnesses as the gunman. He told investigators that although he had been at the crime scene, he had no role in the killing.
In his trial, prosecutors presented no murder weapon or physical evidence.
Despite the new evidence, no state or federal court had been willing to hear Davis's case again. The US Supreme Court denied his petition for an appeal in June.
Human rights advocates in the United States and abroad have denounced a criminal justice system unwilling to hear new evidence that could exonerate death row inmates who possibly have been falsely convicted.
Courts are restricted from hearing new evidence due to a 1996 federal law, intended to limit the number of appeals in death penalty cases and thereby expedite executions.
